"For more than a century now, our interest in those halves of the brain, known respectively as the left and the right hemispheres, have made their way from the annals of science into everyday parlance. “Of course, you know, Jack is a very left-brained fellow (logical, unemotional). Mary is so right-brained (emotional, intuitive). It is amazing they get along at all!” The contest between these two parts of personality and behavior inspired the author of this well-researched book to see how we might bring them together as a harmonious whole—and maybe Jack and Mary, as well.

In this excellent study of the holistic approach to an understanding of how the brain works, James Olson recognizes that we need to use both halves of the brain in a cooperative effort to achieve our most important goals—the hope of a peaceful world. He claims that distortions in thinking can occur when one side of the brain is not fully informed by the other.

A large part of Olson’s thesis involves the problems—largely political—in which the world finds itself. “Peace, like everything else,” he writes, “is an energy, and the two brain hemispheres process energy in radically different ways—one unifies, one separates.” This latter characteristic (the half that separates) is the left half of the brain that, according to the author, largely rules the military complex and can, when the situation demands it (or the military assumes that it does), lead us into war.

Olson also writes extensively about the influence of drugs and their relationship to the brain structure. He claims that those who are left-brain dominant “are at a special risk when it comes to apprehending the truth due to our tendency to hone in on separate parts at the expense of the whole.” However, when we are truly able to bring both sides of the brain into harmony, then perhaps peace, both on a world scale and within, can be realized.